There is a pressing need to develop clean energy sources. Since most of the surface of the earth is covered by water, water-based systems provide the most potential for energy generation due to sheer volume. The gravitational effect that causes tides provides an enormous amount of energy since the mass and force of the water is many times greater than that of any air-based system. Moving even just a few thousand cubic feet of water requires energy that would take up incredible amounts of airspace or physical land to be equaled with either wind or solar power. Therefore the tides may provide a significant amount of renewable energy to be harnessed by orders of magnitude over other renewable energy forms.
As an example, the Bay of Fundy has tidal variation of 40 feet. The energy in moving that mass of water every day is absolutely enormous. This is a naturally occurring geographic phenomenon that may be duplicated in man-made tidal zones.
Present emphasis for water-based energy production focuses on water turbines, which are analogous to wind turbines including propellers, affixed to electrical generators. Similar to wind turbines, however, water turbines require very selective placement to yield sufficient power. That is, water turbines typically require placement in areas of significant current flow. Water turbines are also often large, complex, bulky devices that are not easily deployed. Water turbines also often require an undesirable amount of time to deploy. For forward operating base (FOB) and similar applications that may benefit from water-based energy production, speed of deployment as well as the flexibility of deployment in a wide variety of situations may be significant issues.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have an system and method that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.